Memo to Robert C Middleton:Have you ever read a good book and then, in a short time, forgotten it?

This is the actual email I sent to Robert C Middleton of Action Plan Marketing over the Christmas period.

Hi Robert,

Have you ever read a good book and then, in a short time, forgotten it?

I've done just that far too often. Like most infomarketers I have a tendency to come across a useful resource on my web travels, download it, briefly scan it before moving on to the next web page, email or faceook posting with the promise that I'll get back to it once I have a bit more time to go through it properly. Meanwhile, I sign up for or buy another e-book, video series, audio recording or some other resource. More emails, more PDFs and ever deeper into a never ending pattern of futility.

There are big downsides to that. I think the biggest may be that you end up with a potentially life-changing resource that ends up hidden in sub-folder of a sub-folder of a sub-folder on your hard-drive. (One day, you're going to have time to transfer them into a permanent copy on CD/DVD as part of a fully indexed resource library).

I did that with an excellent little e-book called the Marketing Plan Workbook. I came across that little gem following a link from something from business coach/copywriter Bob Serling. He'd referred his readers to some guy called Robert C Middleton. Theis 'little gem' impressed me so much that I even wrote to the author to say thank-you (and I don't do that very often with freebies)! Like I said, a littl gem, a potentially life-changing resource that I let sit on my hard drive without doing anything with it.

The regular emails continued to come in, (well they do don't they?) and time continued to create pressure. I gave some emails a cursory scan, and I gave quite a few more the 'Mark as Read' treatment, without reading them at all. It's not a nice thing for me to do when I think about it from a personal point of view. If someone did that to my newsletter I would be tempted to delete them from my list. After all, they wouldn't really be doing me any favours would they?

Now it's two days before Xmas, and I'm slowing down slightly. Today I read some of those emails in a bit more detail. One struck home big-time. It has the subject heading:

More Clients - 12/21/10 - The Law of Appreciation

"Wow", I thought, "that one's different! Different message, different logic, different argument! Makes a lot of sense though. Who's the guy who wrote this? Robert C Middleton."

Dive back into the email records.

"Mmmm.. signed up August 2010 only a short time ago. Signed up to get an interesting sounding freebie. Let's have a quick look at that. OMG! I'd forgatten that! That was really good and I haven't used it!

"Four months from August to December, what other good stuff (usable stuff) have I missed? And yet... this guy has continued to put in the effort to create original well-thought through email messages."

The least I can do is apologise to this guy and tell him that I made a mistake. I didn't treat his materials as seriously as I should. I showed a careless disregard for his ability to help. Maybe, just maybe, if I contact him, he'll realise that I'm only the tip of the iceberg, and that there are many others out there who could use his knowldge and help. I may not be able to buy his other products, heck, I may not even need to, but the least I can do is say thank-you for the help he's already given and assure him that I will pay more - a lot more - attention to his contact in the future.

Robert, I offer my sincere apologies and my very sincere thanks to you. I will pay proper attention to your emails in the future, and I will apply those lessons which are suitable and have been neglected straight away.